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Campbell was born in Jamaica, one of four children of Michael and Gloria Ziadie. The Ziadie family is prominent in Jamaica, the descendants of six Maronite Catholic brothers who emigrated from Lebanon in the early 20th century.[2] The family were Greek Orthodox Catholics who settled in Lebanon. Her mother came from English, Irish, Portuguese and Spanish ancestry. Her maternal great-grandmother, family name De Pass, was a Sephardic Jew.[3][2]

Some of her books have included received criticism for unverified claims, including writing in The Queen Mother, The Untold story of Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, that the Queen Mother was born to the family's French cook used as a surrogate.[6][7]

Born with birth defects including a fused labia,[1] Campbell was registered as a boy and brought up as male, though she is genetically female. Campbell has written and spoken about the struggles she faced being raised as a boy during her childhood, including bullying from classmates and cruelty from her parents. “The international protocol in those days was to do what they did; it was perfectly standard," she told The Daily Telegraph in 2013. "In 1949, the feeling was that it was infinitely better to give a handicapped child a little plus, and male was much better than female.”[4]

She sought help at age 13 by secretly contacting her mother's gynecologist, who was sympathetic. When her parents discovered what she had done, they had her hospitalised, where she was injected with male hormones for three weeks. Campbell refused to live as a boy; and her father told her the only solution was for her to commit suicide by taking rat poison.[4]

Campbell moved to New York City to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology.[8] She was not able to have corrective surgery until she was 21, when her grandmother discovered what had occurred and gave her the $5,000 she needed. Campbell legally changed her name to Georgia Arianna and received a new birth certificate. "No one ever faced the knife more eagerly than I. You would have thought I was going on a wonderful cruise - which, in a way, I suppose I was," Campbell wrote in her autobiography. She had already started working as a model in New York City prior to her surgery and was considered a great beauty.[1][6]

In 1974, after knowing him only five days, she married Lord Colin Ivar Campbell, son of Ian Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll. She left him after nine months, and stated he was abusive and addicted to drugs and alcohol. The couple divorced after 14 months. She successfully sued several publications that printed she was a transvestite who had undergone a sex change, and she accused her ex-husband of selling the untrue story for money.[1][4]